Sweetling
by Eris not Eros
Summary: Alec and Jane had always wondered if there had been ulterior motives for keeping them in an abusive household for so long.


**One of my lame 1am drabbles that I'm ACTUALLY PUBLISHING *le gasp!* It's stupid, I know. But I had the idea and couldn't stop myself from writing it.**

**Trigger Warning: Child Abuse**

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_Alec and Jane had always wondered if there had been ulterior motives for keeping them in an abusive household for so long._

The pair first appeared on the Volturi's radar as bruised and battered little children. Layers of clothing covered the purple fingerprints on their arms, the swelling of twisted shoulders and elbows, and the red welts on their backs from many years of lashings. When Aro, Master of the Volturi, had first had the opportunity to delve into their minds he saw the way that the twins would barricade their minds from the torment, the shouting, the threats of eternal damnation, the constant confirmations that they were better off dead.

They could have taken them then. The Volturi was hardly without room or resources. Several members of the guard even offered to act as caregivers for the children, while protesting leaving them with their abusive parents. Aro refused them all.

When the Volturi caught word that the twins were to be burnt for witchcraft, Aro feared that it was too soon. Too soon for the pair to be inducted into the vampire life, that was certain, but also too soon for them to leave their violent environment. The podium on which the twins would burn was built, and the guards lay in wait in the audience that had gathered, not to save the twins but to let them burn. It was important, Aro had insisted, that they feel that pain.

So the flames sprung up, and the Volturi waited, smelling the sharp tang of burnt flesh while the children screamed. The rising smoke clouded their lungs, and only as the consciousness was slipping from the two young humans did the most prominent Volturi Master give his guards the signal to move. The flames were doused, the watchers killed, and the children's blistered bodies laid before the man who controlled their fate. Only then did Aro smile down upon their dying bodies, calling himself their saviour as he bit their necks and welcomed them into their new lives.

Three days of transition and apprehension passed. Aro feared that young Alec and Jane were not ready for his training, and in more ways than one. They woke in rooms of polished metal mirrors, seeing themselves for the first time. '_Sweetlings',_ Aro called them; their beaming liberator dressed in black. Then the twins were separated, drawn into far ends of the palace; dark and unfamiliar, and far from each other.

'_Fight_' Jane was told, and in that first day of her vampire life she was beaten to the ground more times than she had ever been in her entire, pitiful human life. '_You can do better, Sweetling,'_ she was told, as menacing strangers fought to smash her violently against thick stonework. _'Show me that you can fight well enough to be worthy of my guard._'

Alec was sent to a large library filled with strange vampires staring at him as if he were as unwelcome as a plague-bearing rat. They had been told that this boy and his twin were the new favourites; the ones that had so easily gained the favour from their masters that the rest had worked so hard for without success. The boy was seated and told he was worthless. He was a child, untrustworthy, lacking maturity, _evil_, and above all: powerless. Powerless to stop the beatings, powerless to protect his sister, powerless to change his situation. His twin had power. She could hurt people with a look, and his Master liked her for it. Alec, he was a disappointment, and told so many times.

So this continued for many months, and at the end of each evening the twins were sent to separate rooms, forbidden from seeing each other. The isolation made it worse, their only true form of comfort, each other's presence, kept far from their grasps. Yet in their solitude they both found solace in their own reflections, fingers tracing upon mirrors the features that belonged to the other. They had the same jaw shape, the same eyes, the same uneasy posture.

Several years previously Jane had decided that she was going to start liking pain. It had been a very conscious decision, not because she found any joy in pain, but because she knew it would make the beatings that much more bearable. So it made the fighting more bearable. Each morning she would walk into the training room afraid of the pain to come, then she would look up at her Master as he patted her head and called her his Sweetling and knew that she had to become the Jane who enjoyed pain for him; the Jane who could smirk with glee after being thrown into a stone wall hard enough to leave a crater and return for more.

Alec took longer to adjust. Harsh words from his parents followed by harsh words from his tutors had buried themselves in his head. He knew himself to be worthless. He knew himself to be evil. 'Boy' was his name. Or 'Child' or 'Pest', but never 'Alec'. Only those who were good and were dedicated to their work were allowed names. Alec was still the unruly child who should have been left to burn, and he had to be grateful to Aro that he was keeping him alive when he was worth so little to them. '_Do not listen to them_,_ Sweetling_,' the ancient vampire would tell him with a kind gaze and a fatherly arm around his shoulders. '_With time you will show them how talented you really are.'_ So Alec learned to shut out the insults, ignore the snide looks and pretend as if he was focused on his work, as if there were boundaries around his mind.

Jane began to crave her lessons. In the dark on her own she was the weak, scared little girl she had been before the fire. In training she could be the strong Jane, the one who was starting to hold her own in fights and never backed down to anything. She could see the admiration in her Master's eyes as he watched her lessons. He liked the strong Jane, and she could be that for him more and more each day.

Alec learned to disconnect from his emotions. He _wanted_ not to feel. It was all so much easier to file away all those turbulent feelings into a compartment inside his head, not to be accessed by this new Alec. The soft Alec who cried to himself every sleep-free night was envious of this gift. How easy it was not to feel, to not be fazed by petty words or unkind looks, or of the constant reminders that he had no worth in the Volturi.

Then one day the strong Jane entered the domain of the weak, sifting through her bedroom for anything that could bring her pain. It was her greatest pleasure, she was convinced, and all memory of deciding so was gone. Shards of splintered wood crumbled as she tried to press it into her tough skin, and stone turned to dust. Frustration followed, along with the destruction of her room, and she was left to sit in a corner with a metal shard from her shattered mirror, digging a sharp point deeper and deeper into her own wrist.

The shattering of the mirror could be heard all through the palace, reaching the ears of the emotional Alec as he sat before his own mirror. Intuition had him certain that his own never-seen sister was behind it, and for a moment he could almost be sure that it was her he was seeing in the mirror. Perhaps he had grown so tired of seeing only his own features and never hers that his eyes had fooled him somehow. He missed her, and after almost a year of not seeing her he was afraid that he was forgetting what she looked like. The longing to see her was like a torrent, and his eyes stung with what he now associated with the detestable sensation of crying. He needed the unfeeling Alec back, though he had not yet learned how to switch him on at will. So with his eyes closed he focused on his Master's words; '_Learn to control your feelings, Sweetling, then nothing will ever get to you.'_ When his eyes opened, they were cold and lifeless, and around him swirled a soft mist which filled the room and spilled out from under the door.

Jane noticed the mist only as the shard of metal broke off into her own wrist. She was curious, not understanding, so she did not move as it wrapped itself around her and sent her retreating into her own mind as her senses were deprived. The Jane that came too was not the one that had driven a chunk of metal into her own flesh, but the soft Jane who shook in horror, not even remembering doing such a self-destructive act to herself. Trembling, she dug it out with her bare fingers, crying with the pain she hated so much. Her own red eye reflected back at her in the removed shard.

Alec was left in a state exhaustion after the disappearance of the mist. He was found curled up on the floor, emotional, tired and fragile by his smiling Master. He was ready, Aro told him. Now that he had shown his worth, he would be granted a very special reward. Jane could be found curled up on her own floor, caught in a horrified daze while holding a shard of metal in both hands. Alec felt ready to weep again just at the sight of her; his own dear sister who he had imagined with him so many times that there had been moments when he felt she really was. He fell to her side and clung to her, just as she scrambled to her knees and clung to him, both of them so caught up in the feeling of seeing each other again that they were reduced to tearless sobbing.

The shadow of Aro fell over them. '_Now, Sweetlings,_' their Master spoke softly, '_I need you to both stand up so that you, Jane, may show me the effects of your particular power on your brother, Alec.'_

The pair immediately stood; Jane now strong and Alec now emotionless. Jane showed no hesitancy in torturing her own twin brother with her gaze, and Alec, fully aware of what was going to happen, obediently remained still. Jane knew now, as she looked upon her tortured brother, that for Aro she would do this again. She was strong and he had made her so. Alec felt nothing aside from the pain; no resentment, no anger, no horror that his own sister would do this to him without questioning it. Those were the kind of things were locked away in a part of his mind that he could not reach. Only the old Alec had the key, and somehow the new Alec knew that his old self would never return. His sister felt the same. That weak, timid part of her that cried at stubbed toes and cowered in the dark was now gone. She smirked. Alec returned it.

So it had been Aro's plan all along. These perfect little abused specimens were now perfectly altered to play the game he had designed them for; and as he caressed the cheeks of both of them he could see in them the desire to succeed. They _wanted_ to serve him, to please him, to obey his every order. After all, he was their saviour and they were his Sweetlings.


End file.
